Triple Your Rate of Failure and You Might Succeed

Taking risks, doing things that are outside your comfort zone, or making mistakes? You’ve heard the question “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” Well, writer and business man, Og Mandino, did this question one better. When he was asked what the secret of success was, he replied, “You should triple your rate of failure.”

What could you get from trying to fail?

You learn. You get a direct insight that is going to stay with you better than reading any blog post. This can be even more effective if you keep a record of what caused you to fail.

You get through it. Every time you fail, you learn a little more about what you can take. You learn more about who you are, and what you’ve got in you. You realize, “Yes, I can get through this. I’ve survived this and now I’m ready for more.” You know the future is going to be awesome.

You get perspective. Most of the things you worry about happening will never happen. It’s like being afraid to look under the bed with a flashlight because you are scared of what may get you. If you look anyway, to your utter disbelief you find … the cat. Sure, something is going to happen when you try, but when you actually try to fail, you will find that even messing up is almost never as bad as you think it is.

You stop worrying about what others think. You are trying to do all the things that you thought meant failing. What is someone else going to say to stop you, “you might fail”? You are now free to say, “du-uh”!

What about tripling your rate of failure?

If you want to triple it, you can’t afford to stay down. You fail, get up, and you do it again. You keep trying to fail, until you get so good at it that you miss the mark. Then, when you fail at failing, you’ve just made the mistake of succeeding. Oh well, can’t win ’em all.

So what are the best ways to fail?

Make sure you do the things you want to do. As awesome as it is to go against the flow … make sure that it’s your flow that you go with. If you go with everything that every other rebel does, then it’s just as bad as if you followed the mainstream. Listen to your own voice.

Look for where the risk of not trying is higher than the risk of failing. You only have one life to live, and it’s not going to live itself without you. Do not go to the end of your life without making sure that you didn’t waste it!

Always get up and try again. Commit to following through. It is going to take time to fail as many times as you need to. If every time you fail, you get back up, you will just keep getting a little better.

It’s always possible to fail, so why fight it? Run head first at the things you were afraid of failing at. People learn best through trial and error.

Make the errors.

There will never be a time when you know that you won’t fail. So what? Instead of trying to trick your mind into thinking that failure is impossible, embrace the possibility of failure. It’s just not worth living your life in fear of failing.

So, I dare you to try to fail.

You just might make the mistake of succeeding.

About the author: JS Dixon is a personal development blogger at AlittleBetter.net. His blog focuses on personal development a little bit at a time.

Follow a proven framework to earning a living from your passion

My bestselling course on making your first $1k from your passion helped a community of over 2000 adventurers. You can be our next success story.

Great article. This is the first time I’ve been to this blog and I’m very impressed. I definitely agree with what Justin had to say.

I always say – “Life is a game. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you Learn”. It’s all about taking action, and with taking action, you will fail sometimes (unless you are God, lol).

Every successful person that I’ve spoken to seem to have the same story. They tried many things and failed at many things. BUT, the difference between those people and everyone else is that they learned from their failures and became better as a result.

Brilliant post JS. Everyone who are afraid of failing should read this. For me personally, I don’t believe in the word failure. You ain’t dead yet. How can you fail then? There’s only setbacks. No biggie :)

This is a really profound post. It really resonated with me, as I’m currently moving out of my comfort zone and needing to decide how far away to go! I guess it means I should choose the place I have the most possibility of failing in, but its also fierce scary to consciously set yourself up for failure (and a possibility of success)!

Great points! It’s ironic this is coming at me from all angles lately, that perspective is almost like a magic key to unlocking opportunity.

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
Dale Carnegie

Failure gives us perspective, and perspective I dare say creates courage. It may not eliminate fear, but it enables us to run head first into things knowing we’ll be the better for it. Good stuff. I just mentioned something similar to this on my blog.

I think this one really hits home. I’ve read so many posts and articles about motivation, but I think this covers everything in concept. It’s about making steps forward, falling back, but continuing to make steps. When you don’t pursue something because failure is possible or likely, you are deciding to not take any steps at all, and I think that’s where I’ve stood for a long time.

For the longest time, failure was absolutely terrifying. I was held to slightly ridiculous standards growing up and failure was simply not an option. It’s only recently that I’ve learned just how important failing really is and that it is NOT the end of the world if I happen to fail here or there. As long as I learn from those failures, they’re never a waste of time or resources.

Gotta love that “do it, do it, do it”. As a newbie blogger it’s easy to spend too much time thinking and too little writing content. You just can’t fake the knowledge gained from experience. Long term I find it hard to stick to this though, it’s so easy to get self conscious about it all oh woe is me in one of those ruts now thankfully I think this post might have given me the kick in the nuts I needed.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. ”

While failing is a good way to learn and grow prolonged failure is something you want to avoid. It’s important to develop the sensory acuity to learn from your failures and to use them as stepping stones to greater success. Failing is also a good way to move forward because basically it means that you are going out and trying things more often which will always give you a greater chance of success anyway.

Great inaugural guest post, Justin (and great choice, Jonathan)! Maybe we should change the old quote to “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.” Seriously, this post is an important reminder about the law of averages and the lessons brought by trying and failing (versus sitting doing nothing ’cause we’re afraid).

Another benefit of being fearless and facing the possibility of failure is that you will fast begin to learn wisdom. You will begin to know what the voice inside/inner self/wisdom/God/genius is telling you, instead of focusing on your own insecurities. Great post!

Great guest post! Success through failure, I love it! It’s something that I’ve been doing recently. I’ve been sticking my neck out more and trying new things. It’s true that it helps you figure out what you want and stop caring about what others think.

I love the focus on “embracing the possibility of failure”.I think that another way of looking at this is that life is a process and each time we make a mistake or “fail” to achieve our goals, it is an opportunity to learn something new.So failure can help you to transform yourself! Good insight, Justin!

Love the post. If I’m honest with myself I hold back from action because I’m afraid of failing – or rather how I don’t like how I feel when I fail. So I guess the answer is to learn to enjoy failing almost as much as not failing.

@Yuro You are right, if you can learn the first time that is definitely better.

The point of tripling your rate of failures, is not necessarily to actually fail, but to try more risky things, more often. To move outside of your comfort zone. The point of tripling came from the quote of a man who was successful enough to show that he knew what he was talking about.

This is a wonderful perspective, a great illustration of re-framing things to help you succeed. And this is also, I believe the scientists perspective, its not a failure if I learn from it and know one more way which doesn’t work :-).

Have you read Eli Goldratt, his latest book “The Choice” explores this, though from a business perspective…

Yeah! All you have said here is true! You’ve got to be able to take some risks to get to your dream. The road to success is littered with so many failures and it takes courage and persistent to thread it to the end.
Lovely post!

I like the idea of trying something until failing: failing one, two and even three times…
Now, if you are able to enjoy the whole process, then you are succeeding for sure…
Best regards,
Boris from read-y.com

Love this post. Failure is life’s best teacher if you let it, I like to say. Maybe this will inspire some people to let it teach them.

I always try to keep my own words about failure in mind, and this is a great reminder to do so.

I especially appreciate the words “Make sure you do the things you want to do.” So many of us, including myself, forget that. If we want to create totally free and inspiring stories for ourselves, we HAVE to do remember this and DO it.

Good post, and I agree that faliure is absolutely essential to success.
I’ve often wondered how or when we learn that faliure is supposed to be a bad thing. I know that I usually leran the most by trial and error (and that’s a lot of error we’re talking about).

It’s so simple, yet so profound: the reason why we don’t succeed is that we don’t try enough because we’re afraid of failure. Then, when we finally do muster up the courage to try, we end up failing because we adopt a “play to not lose” rather than a “play to win” mentality. This post teaches us to just dive in, and not care a bit about outcome.

Too many people are afraid of failure. Fear holds us back from living the life we should lead. Instead, the majority of the world follow the safe route.

Go to school.
Get a nice, safe job with good benefits.
Work, work and more work.
Pay $100K for some advanced degree (optional)
More work.
Retire.

Why not live unconventionally? Have that inkling to start your own business? Take some action and do it!

The most successful people in the world faced tremendous failures in their lives. Look at Abraham Lincoln as a prime example of this. It’s the ability to overcome failures and keep going that creates success.

Winston Churchill said:

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Well said! Strive for failure! It means you’re learning. It means you’re human. It means you’re living your life to the fullest.

I think this might be the first time I’ve ever commented here, although I’ve followed this blog on and off for over a year now (I think it’s over a year – when did you, Jonathon, start posting at Zen Habits?). Anyway, this post is fan-freakin’-tastic.

I read a lot that I like, but this changed some of my goals. I’m actually lived differently since reading this post. Thanks for allowing this guest post.

Here’s to failing big.

(By the way, I’ve heard of failing big from a ton of other writers, but for whatever reason, this post tipped the scale for me. Perhaps it was the measurableness of it – “triple your failure” is more measurable than “failure bigger”.)

I am sorry that I didn’t read the rest of the comments, anyway, this took me about three days to finish, of fear that I might not like it lol, I find myself stupid, now I take your dare to fail (hence the fear)

I think I need to add this again: Successful people know that failure is part of the learning process. Now, if that is the case, why are some of us scared of failure? Failure is just meant to simply push us forward.